An international website dedicated to providing current information on news, reports, publications,and peer-reviewed research articles concerning alcoholism and alcohol-related problems throughout the world.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Long-term alcohol and caffeine intake and risk of sudden cardiac death in women.

Alcoholandcaffeineintakes may play a role in the development ofsuddencardiacdeath (SCD) because of their effects on cholesterol, blood pressure, heart rate variability, andinflammation. Our objective was to examine the association between long-termalcoholandcaffeineintakes andriskof SCD inwomen.

We examined 93,676 postmenopausal women who participated in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. Women were enrolled between 1993 and 1998 and were followed until August 2009. Women completed a food-frequency questionnaire at baseline and again at year 3. We modeled exposure to alcohol 3 ways: by using baseline intake only, a cumulative average of baseline and year 3 intake, and the most recent reported intake (a simple time-varying analysis).

Our results suggest that about one drink per day (or 5.1–15 g/d) may be associated with a reduced riskof SCD in this population; however, this association was only statistically significant for a model using the most recent alcoholintake. Total caffeine, regular coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and regular tea intake were not associated with the riskof SCD.